Resilience Beyond COVID-19 in West Africa
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about big changes for Tostan, the West Africa-based organization that has partnered with communities at the grassroots for almost 30 years to…
Tostan is a nonprofit organization operating in rural resource-poor regions in five West African countries and partnering with organizations across Africa and around the world. Their mission is to empower communities to develop and achieve their vision for the future and inspire large-scale movements leading to dignity for all.
At the core of Tostan’s programmatic work is their three-year non-formal education program. Through this holistic, inclusive, human rights-based approach,they support partner communities to define and fulfill their own vision for wellbeing and to create positive and sustainable social transformation.
Building on their experience in grassroots education and development, Tostan is engaged in the strategic scaling of community well-being through expanding their direct programming, training and replication of the Tostan model, and broadening of their global influence and movement building efforts.
A Tostan facilitator in Mali engages participants in discussing the importance of using the Oral Rehydration Solution to prevent dehydration.
More than 200,000 community members have participated in Tostan Community Empowerment Programs.
Members of the Community Management Committee from the village of Arikodaa, share their vision map, which they developed together as part of the Community Empowerment Program.
Leaders representing 60 villages in the Department of Matam, in Senegal, gathered for a public declaration to publicly state their intention to abandon female genital cutting and child marriage.
When learning new information on harmful social norms, participants weigh the advantages and disadvantages of inherited norms and themselves choose to change them by promoting practices that align with their deeper values of peace, health, and general wellbeing. They then reach out to their larger community and extended family network in other regions, engaging them in a community-led process for positive and collective social transformation.
In addition to directly scaling the Community Empowerment Program to communities in five West African countries, Tostan shares key aspects of its model through:
By 2030 they aim to enable breakthroughs in well-being for communities in entire regions of five West African countries, and mobilize a wider movement for community well-being with women and young leaders at the forefront of change.
Founder, Tostan
Molly Melching has lived and worked in Senegal since 1974 and founded the international NGO, Tostan, in 1991. Tostan, meaning “breakthrough” in Wolof, developed a unique and holistic, three-year empowering education program that has engaged over 3,500 rural African communities in themes of democracy, human rights, peace and security, health, early childhood development, literacy, and project management skills. The program has led to over 20,000 rural women taking on leadership posts and over 9,300 communities in eight African countries publicly declaring their commitment to abandon harmful traditional practices. Molly and Tostan have received international recognition for their successful work, from, among others: the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, the Anna Lindh Human Rights Award and UNESCO’s King Sejong Literacy Prize. A New York Times best-selling book by Aimee Molloy, However Long the Night, vividly relates Molly and Tostan's story. They are also prominently featured in Melinda Gates's book, Moment of Lift and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s: The Book of Gutsy Women. Molly also received the Ordre national du Lion du Sénégal (National Order of the Lion), the highest distinction awarded by the Government of Senegal. Molly welcomed her CEO successor, Elena Bonometti, to Tostan in 2017. The two leaders worked intentionally and with great care to transition the organization smoothly to its next phase of growth and influence. Molly continues to work on programs and training at Tostan with the title of Founder and Creative Director.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about big changes for Tostan, the West Africa-based organization that has partnered with communities at the grassroots for almost 30 years to…
For nearly three decades, Tostan has co-created and implemented human rights based-educational programs with communities across the African continent that inspire large-scale movements leading to dignity for all. Founder of…
Some 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital cutting (FGC). Every year, three million more women are violated with FGC—a massive, mostly invisible health and human…